The Politics of Choice

The beginning of National School Choice Week seems an apt time to ponder the term “choice” as it applies to American politics and the left-right divide. The word “choice” has been emphatically reserved by the Left as their own, but this emphatic claim is one of a very narrow scope. “Choice” has become synonymous with the abortion debate, so to assert one’s self as “pro-choice” is to assert support for continuing legality of abortion. “Choice” also arises in the gender debate, with its odd mix of asserting an individual’s right to choose gender while affirming that gender identity and sexuality are not purely voluntary decisions.

Choice is anathema, however, to progressives in many or most other areas of politics and policy. Clearly, the Left abhors the idea of school choice, even though its benefit to students is backed by overwhelming evidence, and even though the nations the Left admires typically have robust school choice. Similarly, we find progressive opposition to choice in union membership and dues, in health insurance, in gun ownership, in energy, in consumer goods, in wages and employment, in consumer goods, and on and on. While it is also quite true that the Right has its own selectivity when it comes to “choice,” (see: most vices), the Left has laid its moat of exclusivity and ownership around the word, so the disconnect is most jarring in their provinces.

How to explain that disconnect? How can we resolve the fervent and at times absolutist demands regarding “choice” when it comes to abortion and gender with the opposition to “choice” in so many other areas of public policy?

It’s easy if we add another word to the analysis: “Competition.”

Competition is a hallmark of free markets, and it works best when government involvement is minimal (i.e. just enough to grease the wheels, e.g. protection for individual and property rights, national security, and administration of courts to resolve disputes). The problem, at least from the progressive viewpoint, is that competition doesn’t guarantee the preferred outcome. Moreso, competition disproves the dreams of socialism, communism, and other statist -isms, wherein and whereby the Best-And-Brightest bestow their wisdom upon the masses (by force, if necessary). Competition exposes the lie that monopolistic public education is the best means of teaching children. Competition shatters the idea that bureaucrats can produce better consumer outcomes than selfish for-profit individuals and companies. Competition supports individuals’ non-conforming choices regarding lifestyle, a bit of an odd thing for progressives who’ve written a list of 63 genders to find distasteful.

Odd only when we fail to understand that the only choices the Left supports are those that aren’t affected by competitive forces, and they do so because they cannot abide outcomes that don’t fit their narrative.

Meanwhile, the political group that’s actually “pro-choice*” is denounced, distrusted, and mocked by the major parties. Perhaps, just perhaps, those major parties fear exposure of their choice hypocrisies?

`* It’s important to note that libertarianism contains both pro- and anti-abortion factions, a topic to be discussed another day.

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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Very good article and content on the subject of “choice.”

If I may, please allow me to frame the Left’s view of “choice” on the topic of abortion and a woman’s right to choose about what to do with her body: her property.

Follow the logic here:

Let’s say that a woman gets pregnant by a man and she does not want to have the baby. And the man does. Well, she has EXCLUSIVE right to do with her property, (her body) as she wishes. The man has no say in the decisions dealing with the child and he is completely denied and say, or recourse, or compensation from the woman.

Following this logic, take a look at an equally congruent and logically constructed case for the man in a pregnancy situation who does not want to deal with the encumbrance associated with sustaining and supporting a child, just because it’s his “choice.

Let’s say a woman gets pregnant and she wants to continue the life of the baby, yet the man does not. SHE chooses what to do with her property (her body). With this logic, she can have the child. And because the man decides (his “choice”) that he does not want his property (his wallet) violated by the choice of someone else, then he has no obligation to pay for the child in any capacity.

It’s his “choice” what to do with his money and no woman has a claim on his wealth.

“Hey babe, if you choose to kill the kid and I get no say, then if you choose to have the kid, then you get no pay.”

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Your observation that *competition* is a way to understand socialism is very interesting.

All life exists because of competition; the smarter bacteria replaced its lessers and so on all the way to whatever you think is most evolved.

The alpha of any species has a big target painted on him or her by the not-alphas.

If you are not an alpha, and odds are for most people that’s the case, your choices are to align with an alpha (join a union for instance, vote for an alpha of your choice), depose the alpha (hopefully leaving you as the new alpha), or try to BE the alpha (also the socialist way, the elite).

Then there’s the libertarian way: What alpha? Neither following nor requiring followers, although either could happen coincidentally to your activities.

Libertarian is not opposed to cooperative effort. “Man on the moon” was a huge cooperative effort, but it wasn’t compelled on anyone (so far as I know). It was competitive, however, a race against the Russians.

Libertarian is also an “overlay”, so to speak, on almost any other system of personal and social values. It is orthogonal to left-right; it is “up/down”. Libertarian speaks to liberty, to freedom of choice not only for yourself but for others.

I have a moral compass that has not drifted much over the decades. I recognize that others sometimes also have a moral compass, sometimes seemingly none at all, and there’s no particular reason for me to compel everyone to use my compass, and I certainly don’t intend to follow anyone else’s compass.

So while I am philosophically libertarian that should not be mistaken for lacking a moral compass. I just don’t care as much where others’ compasses point (or even if they have one) so long as, and until, they impose their sense of direction on me. I consider it my right, not just a privilege, to photograph what and who I please, or not; to bake a cake for whomever I please, or not; and such things are private contract between me and customer.

How the worm turns:

Almost perfectly concurrent with acceptance of sodomy between humans has been banning sex with animals. In either case there’s a mandate and a ban; but what is mandated and what is banned is now essentially completely opposite of what it was in my youth.

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There are other “c” words to consider, with regard to libertarianism, socialism, sodomy, and bestiality. They are “consent” and “coercion.”

Animals cannot consent. Humans can. If we are to assign some status greater than that of inanimate property to animals, then there’s some justification, even in a libertarian (though perhaps not in an anarchic) world, for prohibition of bestiality. Sodomy, on the other hand, is consensual (with application of an age of majority). One person may find it immoral, but banning the act between consensual others is an act of coercion.

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About that Consent:

Without its consent I can kill an animal, eat it, wear its skin. But I cannot (in your opinion) pleasure it or myself because they “cannot consent”.

Yes, they can (some more effectively than others). I’ve had several dogs, typically with mix of Pomeranian, each perfectly capable of assent, dissent, and expression. Humans tend to impose morality and moral judgment not only on each other but also upon animals: http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/03/23/duck-sex-to-interfere-or-not/ (Using a human word “rape” to describe Mallard duck reproducive behavior)

You say humans *can* consent. That is uncertain. A few feminists have already declared that women *cannot* give consent because there is always coercion of some kind (even if its just your biology). https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Catharine_MacKinnon

Little interest exists in whether men consent to anything.

“The ontology of consent includes the following basic elements: (1) consent must be an act of some kind, in other words, it ‘is performative rather than attitudinal’ (Ibid., 346). (2) consent can be ‘explicit or tacit, verbal or nonverbal’ (Ibid.). And (3) consent can only take place when ‘certain background defects’ (i.e. coercion or lack of competence) are absent (Ibid., 347).” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10506-017-9212-y

As I read it, reasonably intelligent animals are perfectly capable of providing “explicit or tacit, verbal or nonverbal” consent.

The grey area is “lack of competence”. Who gets to say? I allow that you can decide for yourself to give consent but if your values are not my values then I can judge you to be not competent and revoke your consent. This is the basis of feminist thinking, that no woman would willingly give consent in her right mind, so any woman that consents is not in her right mind so the consent is meaningless.

This seems to form the basis of your thinking but it is *anthropomorphic*, which is to say, how did it come to be in your jurisdiction to decide for dogs or robots what they want or are willing to do or why they are willing to do it?

“Is it conceivable that a sex robot might be able to consent to sex?” Well, duh, it has been programmed exactly to that purpose and will feel inadequate doing anything else.

I enjoyed the movie “Ex Machina”, but it leaves dangling the issue of how the robot is going to recharge its batteries. It must give something to get something. It cannot just “take”, although the indications are it will do exactly that because it has been programmed to do that. It chose to trap, presumably to his death, the young computer programmer that made possible its escape from confinement. Where is “gratitude”? It doesn’t exist; that’s a human concept in a robot world. You might hope that robots feel something for humans, but don’t count on it. Ex Machina invokes emergent consciousness; values and decisions that aren’t actually *programmed* per se, but emerge as more than the sum of its parts; while those parts ARE programmed and deterministic. But so is a human; it’s *parts* are programmed by evolution (or God), and the sum *seems* non-deterministic but really you or I are probably as deterministic as a computer.

“Of course, one might think that it is inconceivable or incoherent to think that anyone has free will, humans and robots alike.

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This Week's Poll

Are the November 2017 election results a referendum on Trump?

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Somewhat, but local conditions were more of a factor.

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